For better or for worse, business, social life, entertainment, and shopping depend increasingly on screen and keyboard. Some try to resist it, but few are wholly immune. Everything is so much easier online, given a fast connection.

For most businesses, the ability to sell, source, communicate internally and externally, and do what used to be called “paperwork”, online gives a decisive competitive advantage, to the extent that it is all but compulsory.

So it is all too easy to forget that many people do live without anything like a decent connection.

Even in Britain, supposedly a “developed” nation, three million homes cannot get access to a broadband service offering more than two megabits per second – already the bare minimum for most practical purposes – and 1% of Britons cannot get broadband at all. In America some 40% of households don’t have broadband access.

This has obvious significance for businesses choosing a location. In particular, those who imagine themselves running a service sector business from their homes often find that the internet connections at their cottage in the country are incapable of coping with the high flow of information often associated with such enterprises.

Yet the greatest significance may be for those businesses located in areas where connections are good. It is all too easy for them to assume that everyone else enjoys the level of service they take for granted. So they load up their websites with the latest flashy gadgetry – ignoring the fact that what makes a site attractive to some will make it inaccessible to others.

Those who keep their websites simple have an advantage over their competitors – easier access to millions more potential customers.